Monday, July 10, 2017

Home Run Derby

The 2017 Home Run Derby is about to get underway as I type this, and just for fun I thought I'd look at the 2017 leaders in homeruns per batted ball, measured by the $HR component, the formula for which is

HR / (PA - BB - SO - HBP).

I would argue that this metric, rather than raw homeruns or homeruns per total plate appearances, is the best measure of a player's true homerun power, because it takes walks and strikeouts out of the equation and only counts instances where the batter made contact.

Going by $HR, it looks like Joey Gallo and Khris Davis should have joined Aaron Judge and Miguel Sano in this year's Derby. On the NL side, Eric Thames would have been a more logical choice than Charlie Blackmon.

Only two players in the top 10, Giancarlo Stanton and Mark Reynolds, currently play for an NL squad. The next two players in career $HR currently playing in the NL are Jay Bruce (.071) and Bryce Harper (.069).

And finally, here are the career leaders for each generation (min. 3000 PA):

Generation Player $HRNational Harry Stovey .021American Bill Joyce .024Deadball Ken Williams .041Ruthian Babe Ruth .099G.I. Ralph Kiner .083Silent Harmon Killebrew .088Boom Rob Deer .092Gen X Mark McGwire .125Millennial Giancarlo Stanton .104A homerun rate of 10% of batted balls used to be impossible; Babe Ruth finished his career with what looked to be the maximum human limit of 9.9%. But now six players in the last two generations have topped the 10% threshold for their careers (including Russell Branyan, who missed my career leaders table because he hit less than 200 homeruns, but who homered at an astounding .105 $HR rate, second only to McGwire).